On Thursday eleven of San Francisco’s firefighters will be taking off to northern Nicaragua, where they will spend one week training Nicaraguan firefighters.
Northern Nicaragua is an environmentally challenging place to live; tropical storms are frequent, as are floods, and there are number of lakes and live volcanoes. Firefighters in this region are faced with a wide variety of challenges, which they face with limited resources and training.
Here’s where our city’s SFFD comes in, along with Bend Firefighters Foundation in Oregon. Firefighters from the northwest will offer a week-long training to their Nicaraguan colleagues that will include vehicle extrication, trauma assessment training, and swift water rescue techniques. Firefighters from six stations in the northern state of Estelí and Matagalpa will attend the training.